Wednesday, October 29, 2014

REPOST: Why parkour is a cure for the fear of being human

Parkour involves maneuvering across a series of obstacles (such as rails, walls, and pipes) with the aim of completing tasks in the easiest, fastest, and most efficient ways possible. Once perceived as causing harm and danger among its enthusiasts, parkour actually promotes discipline and efficiency in movement. Read the article below to know why this sport deserves more attention.

Palestinian youths practise their
parkour skills in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Training is
held in cemeteries, and in former Israeli settlements.

I’m sitting on top of a 2.8 metre-high block painted to look like a
skyscraper, and I’m terrified. Everyone else in the room has already
jumped off this thing, landing perfectly safely and happily on the
massive blue mats below. It is as safe as it could possibly be. I have
been sitting on the edge for 10 minutes willing myself to fall. I am
shaking. I am not going to be beaten.

This is not what most people associate with parkour. The discipline
is about freedom and efficiency of movement, and its practitioners –
known as traceurs – hone the ability to navigate urban spaces by
climbing, jumping, balancing and running through them, using pavements
as more of a guideline than a rule.

The sport, developed by David Belle after experiences of military
obstacle courses, has steadily grown in popularity in Australia and
elsewhere in recent years.

I train at the Australian Academy of Parkour, Exercise and Self Defence (Aapes),
a converted warehouse in Sydney which has been open for a little over
three months and has just over 100 permanent members – a number that’s
surpassed the expectations of JP Gauntlett and Monique McDonald, who run
the space, several times over. Aapes also runs submission grappling
courses and hosts circus skills workshops, as well as providing a
community space where people come to make friends as well as exercise.

“People want parkour to survive,” says JP. “When we opened I expected
60 people to show up and more than 500 came. Every kid in Australia
knows what parkour is now - I don’t think that was true three years ago.
And most parents know either what it is or at least that they don’t
want their kids to do it.”
Despite perceptions of its dangers – fuelled in part by videos of
extreme routines at dangerous heights – one reason for its growing
popularity is its accessibility to athletes at all levels. It’s not a
competitive sport; rather, it’s about progress at a level that’s
meaningful for you.

Monique says: “It’s a very personal sport for me, so the goals that I
create are more achievable and quantifiable than other things. I’ve
tried other sports, fitness, learning guitar and languages, but I can’t
seem to stick with anything. Parkour is the only thing that’s really
made me want to stick to it. I feel like I’m able to reach those goals
within myself. I don’t have to compare myself to others. There’s a great
sense of achievement.”

Parkour – as distinct from free running, which is much more of an
expressive discipline – is not about flips and tricks, or being able to
pull off impressive feats of gymnastics on the streets. At its core is a
philosophy of self-improvement that validates individual progress above
everything, and acknowledges that something that feels ridiculously
easy to one person might be incredibly hard to another.

Fear is as much of a blocker to most traceurs than physical ability.
Actually jumping off something tall takes not just strength and
technique but also mental discipline: you have to be willing to face
your fears and commit to movements, trusting your body’s ability to take
you where you want to go.

“Parkour focuses on fear management with a philosophy of being
strong to be useful – strengthening your mind and body to give back to
people around you,” says JP, who also teaches the Spear system of self-defence.

“The most important thing in self-defence is learning how to deal
with fear, fear control and fear management, how to cope with it
psychologically and still do things to protect yourself - and you can
learn so much more about that from doing parkour than you can from
having big men thrown at you.”

Having done both, I can attest to the truth of that – the fear of
jumping is very real, while fighting people I train with is much less
scary. Learning how to deal with what scares you is a crucial part of
both disciplines - but not something that comes up regularly in most
adults’ lives. Parkour has taught me a lot about myself.
Some people find it easier to put aside their fear than others; I
find it almost impossibly difficult. It would be easy to give up,
knowing that even if I manage to conquer my lack of coordination enough
to run up a wall, I’d still struggle with the fear of getting down
again.

But every step of the way, thanks to a hugely supportive training
group, I’ve found myself acknowledging my terror of losing physical
control, understanding my limitations, and – for the first time in my
life – finding ways to move past them.

Aapes, as an indoor space, offers nervous beginners a more supportive
space than outdoor training. JP says: “When someone’s been told their
whole life not to move a certain way, outside is very intimidating, and
it becomes impossible to get things because there’s no standardisation.
Everywhere is different, everything’s a different surface. But if you
control it a little more people see that even if they’re not using a
crash mat there’s a mat nearby, that brings down their anxiety and they
progress much much faster. People are getting stuff in the space now in
their first week that took me six months to learn.”

The community’s support is also a crucial element of the sport. “It’s
not a gym, it’s not just training,” says Monique. “People come to make
friends and get a sense of community.”

Those supportive relationships extend outside training spaces.
“Everyone knows everyone and everyone travels – you do it for more than
six months and you’ll have ties to people all over the place,” JP says.
“There’s no deception in movement and no competition in movement.
Rather than getting together and competing, we get together and train
together and get better together, and it’s created a much more caring
environment.”

Recently 19-year-old Lokey Coppolaro, who was about to start as an
instructor at Aapes, suffered severe spinal injuries and a skull
fracture after falling off his balcony in a non-parkour-related
incident.

The Australian parkour community got together immediately to help him
out, and was quickly joined by traceurs in half a dozen countries, raising more than $6,000 to help with his recovery and to tide him through the long period where he won’t be able to work.
It’s an extreme example, but not out of character: the parkour
community worldwide is a surprisingly close-knit group. Traceurs
visiting foreign countries stay with each other, train together and find
themselves discovering new cities through the eyes of people who know
them intimately.

“It’s really nice to go to a city and, even though you’re still a
tourist, to go somewhere and be shown these spots that not even most of
the locals know about,” says Monique. “People don’t know about these
beautiful spaces that are tucked away. You feel almost like you can know
the city better than its inhabitants – if you weren’t training you
wouldn’t find these places.”

In return, when overseas traceurs come to Sydney, there’s plenty for
them to see in return. JP says: “I didn’t know about Sydney really until
I started parkour. All these really beautiful spots with sculpture and
fountains – I didn’t know they existed until people took me to jump off
them.”

The sport tends to get people interested in urban development, as
traceurs scope out the potential of new developments as places to train.
The Sydney parkour community is currently concerned about potential development at the heritage listed Middlehead Fort,
a popular training ground and site for Sydney Parkour’s monthly jams
where dozens of traceurs get together and train in the same space. But
all sorts of spaces can be used for parkour - it’s hard, once you know
what’s possible, to walk down a street without getting distracted by
staircases, ledges and other opportunities to leave the well-trodden
path.

“Parkour is so popular because it makes ugly things beautiful,” says
JP. In desolate urban environments, areas ravaged by conflict, or places
consumed by poverty, people use the sport as a way to reclaim their
environments and find something beautiful in the spaces they inhabit.
In the Gaza strip, traceurs do backflips
while bombs fall; in Russia, they scale skyscrapers and dice with death
on the edge of terrifying drops. In Iran, groups of women have taken to doing parkour in parks,
despite the necessity of keeping their hair covered and wearing loose,
covering clothing even in the intense heat, finding catharsis in the
feeling that nothing can stand in their way.

At its roots, parkour is as much about helping other people to
achieve things as it is about achieving things yourself. I’ve not yet
been in a position to do much helping, but I have been on the receiving
end of an enormous amount of support, extra coaching, good advice,
urgent deliveries of sugary drinks to deal with adrenaline spikes, and
help with busting through the things that scare me most.

This is what makes parkour special to me: when I did, eventually,
drop off that high block, for a second it felt like I was flying. And
everyone in the room knew how hard I’d worked for it, how it felt to
finally face a fear and move past it, and cheered for me as I flew.

I’m Brent Morgan Waco and I have been a huge fan of parkour for years. What do you think of the sport? Let’s discuss on Twitter.

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About Me

I’m Brent Morgan Waco, physical therapist from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Though work occupies most of my time, I find time to relax and listen to my favorite punk rock bands from the ‘80s or old school hip hop royalties, like Run DMC and The Beastie Boys. But nothing gets me going than Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Led Zeppelin.
When I am not listening to my favorite artists, you can find me watching again my all-time favorite film “High Fidelity,” or enjoying the latest “Game of Thrones” episode. Getting fit is an important part of my daily routine, and I’m either at the studio doing yoga or outdoors for some parkour workout.